Top Court Considers Inmates' Rights

Published 8:00 pm, Sunday, March 24, 2002

The Supreme Court used the case of a Vietnam veteran who claimed drugs and war stress fueled a robbery and killing spree to consider when death row inmates may claim they got bad legal help at trial.

Defendants facing the death penalty usually cannot afford to hire their own lawyers, and so get lawyers appointed for them by the state. Some are experienced death penalty advocates, others may be trying their first death case or be juggling dozens of other cases at the same time.

In the case of Gary Bradford Cone, he got a lawyer who was allegedly mentally ill during the trial, and who later committed suicide. The court-appointed lawyer made a brief statement to the jury after Cone's conviction, but offered no evidence or further argument to try to persuade jurors to spare Cone a death sentence.

In separate speeches over the past year, two Supreme Court justices have criticized the quality of death penalty lawyers. The court is also expected to rule by summer on whether it is constitutional to execute the mentally retarded.

At issue for the court in Monday's case is whether a defendant's claim that he got unconstitutionally bad legal help can trump a federal law limiting death row appeals. The law was intended to streamline the appeals process and put an end to cases that lingered in court for decades.

Several justices suggested that Cone's lawyer did not do such a bad job after all, and may have had his reasons for staying silent after the prosecutor requested a death sentence.

Only Justice John Paul Stevens, by some measures the court's most liberal member, seemed outraged by the way the trial unfolded. He asked both sides why Cone's lawyer didn't make more of the fact that Cone had received a Bronze Star for valor in wartime, and why there was no discussion of the changes Vietnam service had wrought on Cone.

"Is that they way you would have done it?" Stevens angrily asked the lawyer for Tennessee, which is trying to put Cone to death.

Cone won a federal appeals court ruling that he should be able to make his claim of ineffective legal help. Tennessee appealed to the Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia was clearly frustrated that the Cone case had dragged on so long already.

"This conviction and sentence was 1982. It was 20 years ago!" Scalia exclaimed. Noting that Cone is now in his early 50s, Scalia remarked, "He may geta life sentence by default."